1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to computerized medical diagnostic systems. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to a computerized system and method for diagnosing a patient's medical complaint by utilizing the affected anatomic system and probable cause of the patient's medical complaint.
2. Description of the Related Art
Emergency physicians often have very little time and often even less information about a patient who is brought to the emergency department. Many errors occur because the physician may not consider all of the possible causes of the patient's complaints. A list of the possible diagnoses that a patient can have is called a differential diagnosis.
A few examples will help define the problem. For instance, a patient may be brought in comatose with a high fever. The emergency physician needs to know immediately, sometimes within seconds the causes of coma and particularly the causes of coma that could be caused by infection.
For example, a patient may exhibit a cough and a fever. A logical assumption would be that the patient has an infection (cause) in the respiratory system (anatomic system).
For example, a patient may be brought to the ER in a coma and there may be no history other than that he works in a garage indicating possible carbon monoxide poisoning.
Further, the best testing strategy to distinguish between several possible diagnoses has to be planned in, again, very little time.
What is desired is a way to allow a clinician to start an evaluation based on the limited information that is available. This frequently occurs in emergency medicine, where there are significant constraints on time and information.
There are other occasions when medical personnel have more time to obtain detailed information from and about the patient, and/or the patient can provide additional information by themselves. In these circumstances, a detailed fully automated approach to developing a diagnosis is desired. There are yet other occasions when various combinations of the above are desired depending on the time and information available.